Category: LGBTQ Book Reviews

BLOG TOUR: Nobody’s Prince Charming by Aimee Nicole Walker (excerpt)

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NOBODY’S PRINCE CHARMING

AIMEE NICOLE WALKER

M/M ROMANCE

RELEASE DATE: 03.23.18

Nobodys Prince Charming Cover  

COVER DESIGN: JAY AHEER/ Simply Defined Art

COVER PHOTOGRAPHER: WANDER AGUIAR 

BLURB 

Fire and ice. Oil and water. Vodka and decisions. That’s what Darren McCoy and Wren Davison are: two opposites that shouldn’t mix well. Dare believes in fairy tales, true love, and happily ever after. Wren believes in fast cars, freedom, and no-strings sex. What can these two men possibly have in common? A magnetic pull strong enough to obliterate logic and reason.

For more than a year, Dare and Wren have worked together at the Curl Up and Dye Salon. Dare has pursued the mysterious, brooding man, and Wren has resisted his provocative charm. Then one day, something happens that allows the men to see each other in a new light. Wren learns that Dare hides a heavy heart behind his brilliant smile. Dare realizes that beneath Wren’s gruff exterior beats the heart of a prince.

Passions ignite once the men stop fighting their attraction, but will it be enough to overcome their differences? Is Wren the prince that Dare is looking for? Can Dare teach Wren that true love does exist?

Nobody’s Prince charming is a modern-day fairy tale where some princes ride Harleys, and castle walls are built to scale. It is the third book in the Road to Blissville series but can be read as a standalone book. This book contains sexually explicit material and is intended for adults eighteen and over.

AMAZON US: https://amzn.to/2GEVRiv

AMAZON UK: https://amzn.to/2E7iyq1

Nobody's Prince Charming Teaser 2

Nobody's Prince Charming Teaser 3 

EXCERPT

We didn’t say anything on our way up to Dare’s room because neither of us wanted to risk waking Ralph. We were lucky that we didn’t get caught when we pulled that stunt in the laundry room. Okay, the stunt that I pulled. I knew that Ralph liked me, and I even suspected he knew that his grandson had become very important to me, but that didn’t give me the right to be disrespectful in his home. It wasn’t because we were gay either. I would’ve felt the same if we were a straight couple sneaking up to… Couple? I rolled the word around in my head a few times, expecting a negative thought to refute its validity but none came. I discovered I liked the way the word felt, sounded, and even tasted on my tongue. Just because I didn’t speak it out loud didn’t mean it was less true.

When we got to Dare’s room, we silently undressed each other in between soft kisses in the muted light from the lamp on the bedside table. The mood between us was different like we both had realized something important that day: what we shared was poignant and real. There was a confidence in Dare’s hands when he touched me and in his eyes when he looked at me. Did he see and feel the same changes in me?

Even my arousal was different. Rather than the all-consuming fire, it was a slow-burning flame that never seemed to diminish or burn out. It vibrated through me like normal, but new emotions joined the passion: tenderness and a desire for something I didn’t deserve and shouldn’t want. I’d been stingy with my heart for my entire life, giving it only to my mom who had died and a boy who was nearly rejected by his family for loving me. My mom didn’t choose to willingly leave me, but the boy did. I didn’t blame him, but it still hurt, especially when our breakup was only a few months after my mom’s death. I had no one in the world I could count on until I met Jimmy and Danny. I sure as hell couldn’t count on Falcon. Just thinking about him brought on a fresh wave of exhaustion, which killed my arousal.

Dare didn’t seem to mind. He pulled back the sheets and blankets then gestured for me to climb inside. He joined me after I got situated then turned off the light before he rolled over and lay his head on my chest. In the dark, it was easier to find the words that I couldn’t speak to anyone else. Hell, Jimmy and Danny didn’t even know that Falcon was my sperm donor, yet here I was about to tell Dare everything.

“Wren,” he said softly in the darkness. “You don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to, okay? If you do want to talk, I promise you that nothing you say will leave this room.”

“I know, Sparkles.” I trailed my hands up and down his back, finding comfort in the rhythm and already familiar feel of my fingers bumping along his spine. “You’d never betray my trust.” I knew it as certain as the sun would rise in the east. No matter what happened between us, Dare would keep my confidence. “Once upon a time,” I began to lighten the mood. I expected Dare to snort, but he giggled. “What?”

“That’s a phrase I use frequently in my head. I tend to work everyday events into fairy tales.”

“Yeah? Who am I?” I asked.

“Prince Charming, duh. Only with longer hair, biker boots, and a beefier body. My prince rides a Harley instead of a horse.”

“Sparkles, I’m nobody’s Prince Charming.”

“You don’t get to decide that,” he said in a singsong voice. “I decide who my Prince Charming is and no one else.”

I ignored the fluttering in my stomach and dug deep for a gruff response. “Fine, but don’t say that I didn’t warn you.”

“Once upon a time…” Dare prompted.

 

 Aimee Logo

I am a wife and mother to three kids, three dogs, and a cat. When I’m not dreaming up stories, I like to lose myself in a good book, cook or bake. I’m a girly tomboy who paints her fingernails while watching sports and yelling at the referees. I will always choose the book over the movie. I believe in happily-ever- after. Love inspires everything that I do. Music keeps me sane.

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TWITTER – https://twitter.com/AimeeNWalker?lang=en

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Blog Tour: Eyes Wide Open (Graves Brothers #1) by V.M. Sanford (excerpt and giveaway)

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EYES WIDE OPEN

GRAVES BROTHERS BOOK 1

V.M. SANFORD

M/M ROMANCE

RELEASE DATE: 02.02.18

Eyes Wide Open Cover

COVER ARTIST: ANGSTY G

AMAZON US: https://amzn.to/2pEni1k

AMAZON UK: https://amzn.to/2IRbtgP

 

BLURB

Jason has been in love with Spencer for most of his life, yet there he is, organizing Spencer’s bachelor party because Spencer’s getting married—and not to him.

Spencer wishes he could marry Jason instead of Lydia. He’s loved his best friend for years, but he needs to do the best for his family and their vineyard. Knowing he’s doing the right thing doesn’t make it easy, though.

Jason’s family pushes him to confess his feelings to Spencer, and he wants nothing more, but he’s afraid Spencer will run the other way and that their friendship won’t resist the revelation. But when Spencer gets drunk during his bachelor weekend in New York and tells Jason he loves him, everything changes—or that’s what Jason thinks.

Jason doesn’t want to be the other man, and Spencer doesn’t want him to be. That means Spencer has a choice to make. Will he marry Lydia and help his family, or will he finally give in and choose Jason?

Eyes Wide Open- teaser 1

Eyes Wide Open- teaser 2

EXCERPT

Spencer checked the office door. If he was fast enough, he’d manage to get out within the next ten minutes, and that would mean escaping his mother’s plans for the evening. If he wasn’t able to leave, though… Well, he’d have to go through the rant he knew she’d spout because he wouldn’t be having dinner with her and his father that evening. He might love both of them, but that didn’t mean he wanted to spend most of his nights with them, not after having to spend his days in their company, too.

He supposed that was one of the downsides of having to work with family. His best friend Jason didn’t seem to want to avoid his brothers, though, and they were co-owners of the company their father and uncle had built in their days.

“Spencer?” someone called from the entrance of the building, and Spencer sighed. His mother was there, and she was going to find him within the next few minutes.

He didn’t answer. He knew she’d come to his office to look for him anyway. She always said she was the owner of the vineyard and that as such, she could enter every office as she pleased. He supposed she was right—the vineyard was indeed hers, even though she shared its ownership with Spencer’s father.

“Spencer, why didn’t you answer when I called out?” she asked as she walked in without knocking, her heels clicking on the floor.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.”

She arched a fine eyebrow. “Your door was open.”

“I must have been particularly focused on what I was doing.”

“Dinner will be on the table in fifteen minutes.”

And there it was. Spencer’s parents lived on the vineyard. Spencer could walk from his office to his parents’ house in about five minutes, which was one of the reasons he’d refused his mother’s offer when she’d wanted to build him a house there. Just the thought of living so close to her made him want to run away.

Not that he’d ever tell her that, of course.

“I’m sorry, Mother, but I already have plans.”

“You do? You didn’t tell me about it. Are you going out with Lydia?”

That was the only acceptable reason Spencer would have not to stay, at least in his mother’s opinion. “No. I’m going to the Graves’ tonight.”

She wrinkled her nose. “The Graves? Why?”

“Because Mrs. Graves invited me.” And because the more evenings he managed to spend away from his mother, the better he felt.

“Of course she did. You’ve been going there for decades. It’s a surprise she isn’t annoyed by you yet.”

Spencer had to remind himself that he loved his mother no matter what she said, and that he probably wouldn’t survive jail, not in one piece anyway. “I’ll stop going when she stops inviting me.”

“I’m sure she’s too polite to tell you she doesn’t want you there.”

Because no one could want Spencer around. Sometimes he wondered why he bothered coming to work and seeing his mother every day. Of course, if he pointed this out, she’d just say that of course she wanted to see him, that she was his mother and that she loved him. That Mrs. Graves wasn’t his family and that he should spend more time with his own parents rather than with Jason’s, as if he didn’t spend almost every hour of every day with them.

He grabbed his messenger bag and his coat. He could put it on in the car, even though he’d be cold on the way there. He wasn’t parked that far away, and he wasn’t sure he could stand one more minute in his mother’s company.

Unfortunately for him, she followed him to the building door, so he paused there to slide his coat on, trying to ignore the puppy eyes she was giving him. “I already cooked for three. And of course, I have enough for Lydia if you want to invite her.”

Spencer didn’t point out Lydia liked her about as much as he did. His mother liked his fiancée well enough, he supposed, or well enough to push him to propose anyway. He didn’t kid himself that she’d done it because she wanted him to be happy, but she was doing her best to incorporate Lydia in their life. She wasn’t as warm and welcoming as Mrs. Graves had been to Spencer since day one, but Spencer knew she didn’t have it in her. Sometimes, he wondered why she’d had children—or a child since he didn’t have siblings. She’d never been motherly, and Spencer couldn’t remember a time when they’d cuddled, kissed, or said I love you. Not that he’d done any of that with his father, either, but still. Mothers should be loving and warm. Or maybe Spencer’s idea of mothers was based on Mrs. Graves, and most mothers weren’t that way.

He didn’t know, and he didn’t care. He loved his mother, but most of the times, he wished she were more like Jason’s, and it always made him feel guilty as hell. The puppy eyes didn’t help, but he was used to his mother using guilt to make him do things.

He leaned in and kissed her cheek. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Are you sure you can’t stay? I’ve already cooked.”

“I’m sure. It wouldn’t be fair to Mrs. Graves.”

“And how is leaving me with leftovers fair to me?”

Spencer sighed. He didn’t want to fight, knowing his mother would pout and ignore him until he apologized even though he hadn’t done anything wrong. “You should have asked me before cooking for three. Even if I wasn’t going to Jason’s parents’, I could have had plans with Lydia.”

And really, what man still had dinner with his parents every night at thirty-three years old? Spencer might not have a problem with it if he did so because he actually wanted to be there, but he didn’t.

“But you don’t have plans with Lydia.”

“She could have come with me to the Graves’.”

“But she’s not. She doesn’t like them very much, does she?” She sounded as if the fact that Spencer’s fiancée didn’t like the Graves meant she was right about them.

“She likes them.” Not that Lydia saw them often. She and Spencer might be engaged to be married soon, but they’d never really meshed their lives together. They each did their own thing, had their own apartments, their own lives. She’d met the Graves family, of course, just like Spencer had met her friends and her father, but that didn’t mean they saw each other on a regular basis.

“Why isn’t she going with you, then?”

Spencer hooked his bag over his shoulder and took his car keys out of his pocket. “Because she had plans with her father. I’ll see you tomorrow, Mother.”

He left without adding anything. If he continued standing there, he’d never get to the Graves’ in time. His mother was the queen of arguments and guilt, and while he might have given in any other day, he tried to never miss dinner at the Graves. He didn’t want to disappoint them.

He didn’t want to disappoint Jason.

He felt better when he got to his car, even though he could feel his mother still staring at him. He slid into the car and started the engine, doing his best to appear as if he wasn’t in any haste, waving at his mother as he passed by her.

He relaxed as soon as he passed under the sign that told customers they were at Maureen’s Vineyard—his mother’s name, of course. How else could they have called the family business?

He didn’t want to think about his mother anymore, though. He was free for the night, and he was going to enjoy it.

VM Sanford Logo

V.M Sanford has been writing about the paranormal since he was a child but decided to give publishing a try only in his thirties.

He found out he likes writing about more than wolf shifters and already has several plot bunnies lined up, waiting for him to write their books.

He’s lived all over Europe and enjoys cats, ice hockey and reading biographies of kings and queens. He’s still confused about what and who he is even though he’s in his mid-thirties, but he finally decided to come out as a transgender man, at least to his readers.

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A MelanieM PreRelease Review: Magic Runs Deep by Alex Whitehall

Rating: 5 stars out of 5

 

For the last five years, Veier has been chained to a king’s throne in his bear form. When a neighboring kingdom overthrows the crown, Veier’s imprisonment ends, but true freedom is not so easily earned. With blood on his hands, he needs someone with patience, strength, and trust to help him become the person he was before and prove to the invaders that he isn’t the monstrous king’s loyal pet.

Elrid, the invading king’s brother and a powerful mage, is everything Veier despises. He’s also the only thing between Veier and execution, because he thinks he can help Veier change from an aggressive bear shifter into a reasonable man. While the pair have a rough start, with long talks and mutual leaps of faith, they begin to care for each other.

However, the closer Veier gets to his freedom, the closer he is to losing Elrid. He must find balance in his heart and his life if he wishes to truly claim the freedom he’s been given—and the man he loves.

I just loved everything about Magic Runs Deep by Alex Whitehall.  Here is a fantasy novel where the author managed to combine  some very dark and realistic elements like PTSD, the horror of torture , the  effects of long term prisoner captivity under the worse conditions, with that prisoner’s recovery and love.    That the prisoner is an Ursinae or bear shifter, the one to save and help him recover a mage and brother to a king, and that some of the methods used include magic?  In the hands of author Alex Whitehall, that seems normal.  Whitehall seamlessly blends modern methods for dealing with PTSD and the magical to come up with a unique combination of spells and universe for this story that entranced me.

The Ursinae had their own magic as do the Kingdoms themselves.  I could cheerfully dwell in this land for many books, hoping to learn more not just about Veier’s shifter history but all the neighboring Kingdoms across the lands.  If they are half as fascinating as the ones that Whitehall created for the ones we got to know here, I’m all in for as many stories as the author wants to tell.

These characters were amazing!  They were so well rounded and pulled so many emotions from me in their journey to  helping Veier recover from his heinous imprisonment and the scars he now carries inside and out.  As it should be, his recovery is painful, slow, full of anger and fear.  And the reader is on this agonizing path with Veier every step of the way. So is Elrid, the mage who sees the tragedy in Veier’s fate if he can’t be helped and the man fighting to regain who he was.  I was so absorbed in Veier’s tale I totally forgot what time it was and read into the early hours.

There are other equally important storylines flowing here.  Unrest in a kingdom slow to accept new rulers, people hesitant or afraid of the shifter among them, a man eager to go home again and afraid of what he would find…all these narrative threads are carried through, their importance to the overall plot arc handled beautifully, never impeding or overtaking the main plotlines but adding interest to them,  like spice does to a great meal.

But the heart and center here is Veier and Elrid and what a story that is.  It’s heartwarming, sometimes heartstopping, and always rewarding.   This is one for my “happy shelf”, when I need a book to pull out to put a smile on my face and a lightness in my heart.    How I loved this couple.  I think you will too.  I highly recommend Magic Runs Deep by Alex Whitehall.

Cover art:  Shayne Leighton.  I like the cover, has some very nice elements on it, including the character of Veier.

Sales Links: Riptide Publishing | Amazon

Book Details:

book, 183 pages
Expected publication: April 9th 2018 by Riptide Publishing
Original TitleMagic Runs Deep
ISBN 1626497478 (ISBN13: 9781626497474)
Edition LanguageEnglish

A Caryn Review: The Moth and Moon by Glenn Quigley

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

This book is a little different than anything I’ve read before, and though it took me a while to warm up to it – the beginning was certainly slow – I can only say that I was really pleased by the time I got to the end.  Once I became invested in it, I couldn’t wait for the next plot twist and revelation.  It is definitely not predictable!

The setting is the village of Blashy Cove, the only settlement on the island of Merryapple, off the Cornish coast, in 1780.  Blashy Cove is nothing like the islands and villages around it, including its tolerance for same sex relationships, which are viewed as absolutely nothing out of the ordinary.  There is no cathedral, church, or even chapel from the Christianization of the British Isles, and even the old religions are no longer followed; the “people believed in themselves”.  Like all small villages, everyone knows everyone else’s business, but for the most part it is a friendly place to live.  Its economy is primarily related to fishing, but it has the usual village accoutrements of shops, bakeries, smithies, and its most iconic building is the Moth and Moon tavern.  The Moth and Moon is a vaguely steampunk, somewhat ramshackle building that was built hundreds of years ago when the village was founded, and continuously added on to until it became a huge five-story behemoth full of forgotten rooms and corners, that dominates the village.  It is also the heart and soul of Blashy Cove.

Robin Shipp is a middle aged fisherman whose ancestors have been sailors for at least 4 generations.  He’s an enormous man, a little slow, but kind-hearted.  He watches out for everyone in the village, but the other villagers have always viewed him with a little suspicion, because his father disappeared under mysterious circumstances, and was possibly even a murderer.  Robin tries not to let their distrust get to him, and goes about his business unselfishly.

When a hurricane approaches the island, with only a half day’s warning as storm clouds appear on the horizon, Robin is the first one to notice, and is the first man to start gathering the villagers into the Moth and Moon, which is far and away the safest place to shelter.  Because it is just his way, he puts everyone’s safety before his own as he brings them into the tavern.  Most of the villagers arrive just before the storm hits, hunker down inside the Moth and Moon, and as they anxiously wait for the storm to pass, it becomes apparent that there are many secrets in the village, and the pressure of the storm and fear of death cause people to rethink a lot of what they have assumed is truth.

To this point, there is really nothing in the way of romance at all going on.  We know that Robin had been in a relationship with the toymaker, Duncan Hunger, and that it ended badly, but no details were given.  Edwin Farriner is the baker, and it also became apparent that he is holding a torch for Robin, who is oblivious.  Things come to a head when the three men ride out the last half of the storm in the lighthouse, and are forced to confront truths about themselves and each other.

There is a lot of description, and a lot of world building that in the beginning truly seemed to be a little random, and a little too much.  It is what made the beginning of the book so slow for me.  The action basically mirrors the storm itself, with tension developing in the Moth and Moon as well as in the lighthouse as the storm wreaked havoc in the village, although the majority of the revelations about the secrets of the town and its people comes in the aftermath of the hurricane.  It wasn’t until this point that I felt a real emotional connection to the characters, but the way they reacted to the dramatic revelations of past events was very compelling.  If the rest of the book had been as interesting, I would certainly have rated it higher, but the slow start meant that if I was not reading it for review, I might well have DNF’ed it.  I’m glad I stuck it out though, the ending is pure sweetness.

Cover art by Nathasha Snow is just a little mysterious, which fits with the atmosphere of the book.

Sales Links:

NineStar Press | Amazon | Smashwords | Barnes & Noble | Kobo

 

Book Details:

book, 172 pages
Published March 19th 2018 by Ninestar Press
Original TitleThe Moth and Moon
ISBN139781948608060
Edition LanguageEnglish

A Lila Review: Promise Me We’ll Be Okay by Nell Iris

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

What do you do when your past comes knocking?

Six hundred and ninety-five days. That’s how long it’s been since Jude’s fiancé broke off their engagement. With the help of his brother and his all-encompassing love for music, Jude glued the broken pieces of his heart back together, but when his ex shows up on his doorstep late one evening, Jude fears it will fall apart again.

Two years ago, Vincent made a terrible mistake. He left the love of his life for stupid, ill-advised reasons. It took a traumatic event to bring what was truly important in his life into focus. Older and wiser, he’s now ready to do whatever it takes to win Jude back.

Their chemistry is as explosive as ever, but will they be able to work through the real issues? Can trust once broken be rebuilt?

Promise Me We’ll Be Okay starts in the middle of the action and it’s packed with feelings and broken hearts. It’s more of a moment in time than a full story; a detailed look at a second chance relationship without the need to see what happened before or after the fact.

The best part is the ability the author has to make the reader feel the characters’ sadness, need, and happiness. There’s not much of a plot since it takes place within a couple of days, but what we get to learn is part of the characters and not a simple retelling of events. Even the secondary characters have great backstories.

I wish we had more of it. Not only because it has a great premise but because it has the opportunity to bring a great redemption. Yes, we get all the necessary information to understand the main couple’s actions, it just needed a bit more to be great. But that’s a problem most short stories have in common.

It is a very quick read and if you only want a taste of a love story, this story is for you. If you are looking for complicated stories and plot twists, then keep looking.

The cover by Written Ink Designs show’s Vincent and Jude. The piano gives us an idea of what’s the story about.

Sale Links: JMS Books| Amazon | NOOK

ebook, 92 pages
Published: March 3, 2018, by JMS Books
ISBN: 9781634865869
Edition Language: English

Julie Aitcheson on Covers and her new release First Girl (author guest post)

First Girl by Julie Aitcheson
Harmony Ink Press
Cover Art:  Aaron Anderson

Buy Links

Amazon |  Barnes & Noble |   Dreamspinner Press

Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words is happy to have Julie Aitcheson here today talking about her latest novel First Girl. Welcome, Julie.

♦︎

“Cover Story”

By Julie Aitcheson, Author: First Girl, Harmony Ink Press, April 2018

I love talking about the cover for my book, because it is exactly how I pictured it. With minimal back and forth and few specifics from me, artist Aaron Anderson (contracted by Dreamspinner Press), hit it out of the park. The image is dark and haunting- a frail female form borne up through murky water in a shaft of iridescent light. It encapsulates the essence of the book in the way every writer surely hopes their cover will.

Water is as much a central character of First Girl as my heroine, Gabi Lowell. Water’s scarcity shapes everything about Gabi’s existence, from her environment to what she eats and drinks to the politics that govern her world. The fear of the distant, unseen ocean permeates the psyche of her community, and her unfathomable connection with it (and the creatures therein) is what ultimately lures her out of her frightened complacency and into the unlikely role of hero. In this passage from the first part of the book, we witness Gabi in her room, her sanctuary, and get a first glimpse of this defining relationship with water:

“Go put on something dry while I put out your pills with some tea and cake. It’s already thirty minutes past time.” Gram’s hair stood out in white shocks from her head, adding drama to the urgency in her voice. When it came to the pills, every minute mattered. Taken as a powder mixed into formula when Gabi was a baby, then swallowed whole with water when she was old enough to manage pills, the medicine was a fact of Gabi’s life. The pills, her father explained, were the only things keeping Gabi’s lungs working. Missing a dose or taking one too late could cause her entire respiratory system to shut down, like sealing a whale’s blowhole shut and holding it deep underwater.

Gabi took her first relaxed inhale since leaving the house that morning and released it on a sigh as she entered her room and shut the door behind her. The walls were painted in blended shades of blue and green, an impressionistic rendering of seaweed-swirled water. Her books, hundreds of them, were crammed into bookcases and milk crates and stacked into wobbly towers that deterred anyone but Gabi from entering for fear of triggering an avalanche. She was not a hoarder, Gabi insisted when her father and brother ribbed her for her trove of books. She was simply starved for information. Sometimes she thought she would rather have words than air.

As she peeled off her dripping socks and leggings, Gabi’s gaze wandered to the carefully marked books on cetacean biology piled within easy reach of her bed. She had been eating, sleeping, and breathing whales in preparation for her presentation that day, certain that if she just knew her subject matter well enough, the words would flow effortlessly out of her. She was wrong.

Whales were a peculiar fascination for a girl who was afraid of water. The mere thought of being close to more than a bucketful of the stuff was enough to make Gabi shake, a phobia her father didn’t discourage. Recreational swimming had been forbidden since before Gabi was born anyhow. Water resources were scarce and every available drop that fell or condensed was immediately sequestered for purification and municipal use. Anyone who violated these practices risked heavy fines and even imprisonment. Immersion in water was illegal. All bathing was done from a small ration delivered in measured containers three times weekly around Alder, just as it was in every other branch of the Unitas fellowship. Precipitation in the form of rain or snow was collected and transported to a treatment facility wherever possible.

There was no real need to deter residents from collecting their own water stores. Thanks to years of unchecked emissions and nuclear meltdowns during The Great Strain, which attacked technologies as well as life forms, no one dared use or ingest water before trained professionals treated it. Though she gobbled up any small morsel of information she could about the mysteries of marine biology, Gabi couldn’t imagine actually seeing the ocean, watching it swell and threaten to consume her. But something drew her back to her books time and again and compelled her to recreate her own dry land version of the sea in her tiny bedroom.”

I wish I had a clear, writerly explanation for how Water showed up as a principal character in my book, but I don’t. I’m just grateful for a cover that shows Gabi in her true element and rising up, as all good heroes must.

First Girl by Julie Aitcheson

Blurb

Some things are worth fighting for: a sense of identity, personal freedom, truth, and new love—even in a society that forbids them.

In the aftershocks of catastrophic climate change, the fundamentalist Christian group Unitas seized the opportunity to grab power in the United States. Gabi’s father, Sam Lowell, is one of the most powerful men on the Unitas council… and his sickly daughter’s hero, until Gabi discovers the horrors being carried out in the name of religion.

Gabi’s mission to expose Unitas will take her into the company of misfits and dissidents and beyond the borders of everything she knows as her life is threatened at every turn. Along the way, she uncovers her true origins and astonishing power, along with a ruthless dictatorship masquerading as a benevolent democracy that will stop at nothing—including playing God—to win the game of survival.

About the Author

Julie Aitcheson began her pursuit of writing as a screenwriter, then realized that a little exposition never hurt anyone and switched to books. She has had articles published in Echo Quarterly, Communities Magazine (formerly Talking Leaves Magazine), Isabella, and All Things Girl.  Most recently, she received a full fellowship to the 2013 Stowe StoryLabs and won second place in the 2014 San Miguel Writers’ Conference nonfiction writing competition.

Julie lives wherever her bohemian heart takes her, and wherever she can hit the hiking trails when her muse decides to take a personal day. She has worked extensively with young adults as an experiential educator, both across the United States and in India. After spearheading an initiative to assist at-risk youth in becoming trained for green jobs, Julie threw herself into writing stories for young adults that do justice to their intelligence and complex emotional lives. Her debut novel, Being Roy, was released by Harmony Ink Press in October of 2017.

Julie continues to seek out unique life experiences to provide grist for the mill of her imagination, including her work as a medical actress at a simulation laboratory. There, she indulged her love of the dramatic arts and her passion for health education while amassing enough writing material to sink a barge.

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Author Website: www.julieaitcheson.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/julie.aitcheson.7

Twitter: https://twitter.com/julsaitch

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julsaitch/

Google+:  https://plus.google.com/u/0/+JulieAitcheson

Release Blitz and Giveaway for Garrett Leigh’s Soul To Keep (Rented Heart #2)

 

Universal Buy Link
 
Length: 62,000 words
 
Cover Design: Black Jazz Design
 
Rented Heart Series
 
Rented Heart (Book #1) – Universal Buy Link
 
Blurb
 

Recovering addict Jamie Yorke has returned to England from California. With no home or family to speak of, he sticks a pin in a map and finds a small town in the Derbyshire Peak District. Matlock Bath is a quiet place—he just needs to get there, keep his head down, and stay clean. Simple, right? Until a chance meeting on the flight home alters the course of his so-called life forever.

Ex-Army medic Marc Ramsey is recovering from life-changing combat injuries while pulling nights as a trauma specialist at the local hospital. Keeping busy is a habit he can’t quit, but when Jamie—so wild and beautiful—bursts into his life, working himself into the ground isn’t as compelling as it used to be.

​Marc falls hard, but chaos lurks behind Jamie’s fragile facade. He’s winning his battle against addiction, but another old foe is slowly consuming him. Both men have weathered many storms, but the path to the peace they deserve might prove the roughest ride yet.

 

Garrett Leigh is an award-winning British writer and book designer, currently working for Dreamspinner Press, Loose Id, Riptide Publishing, and Fox Love Press.


Garrett’s debut novel, Slide, won Best Bisexual Debut at the 2014 Rainbow Book Awards, and her polyamorous novel, Misfits was a finalist in the 2016 LAMBDA awards.


When not writing, Garrett can generally be found procrastinating on Twitter, cooking up a storm, or sitting on her behind doing as little as possible, all the while shouting at her menagerie of children and animals and attempting to tame her unruly and wonderful FOX.


Garrett is also an award winning cover artist, taking the silver medal at the Benjamin Franklin Book Awards in 2016. She designs for various publishing houses and independent authors at blackjazzdesign.com, and co-owns the specialist stock site moonstockphotography.com with photographer Dan Burgess.

Giveaway

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